TRUMP PRAISED BY JEWISH PANELISTS FOR MULTIPLE SUCCESSES IN HIS FIRST 100 DAYS

By: Dave Gordon

Eight hundred Trump-supporters gathered in a Los Angeles-area venue recently to hear four major US media figures laud the President for making impressive executive choices during his first 100 days in office. The panelists were conservative talk radio hosts Larry Elder, Hugh Hewitt, and Dennis Prager; and Joel Pollak, senior editor of Breitbart. They spoke at the 4th Annual Unite Inland Empire Conservative Conference, entitled “Trump’s First100 Days”.

At the conference, Trump was praised for his Supreme Court choice of Neil Gorsuch, his national security team, his strike on Syria, his goal to overturn Obamacare, and the tougher Iran sanctions he imposed.

Dennis Pragerhighlighted many of the President’s good decisions, like appointing Nikki Haley as US Ambassador to the UN. However, the Jewish syndicated columnist and author of seven books – including the recently released Ten Commandments: Still The Best Moral Code– said that Trump should divest the US entirely from the UN.
“It is a morally bad organization. It does more harm than good. You can have aid agencies without the UN. What good has the Security Council done? It is the most anti-Jewish institution in the world.”

Regarding reports of rising anti-Semitism in the US, Prager declared that most of the urgency is fabricated and that there is only minimal threat to us right now. “All of the Jewish centers’ bomb threats – this was hysteria – all because of a black radical and a disturbed
Jewish kid in Israel. It wasn’t forty anti-Semitic incidents; but maybe one or two,” he insisted.

Some maintain that the President attracts those who bear ill-will towards the Jews. To this Prager responded: “It’s a world of lies to say that Trump has increased
anti-Semitism, that he is an anti-Semite, and that he has let anti-Semites in his administration.” The true menace to Judaism, he explained, was “the transformation of the university into the most Israel-hating institution in America.” Prager declared that hatred of Jews on college campuses as well as hatred withinthe Arab world may be among the reasons that Trump has waffled on his promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. “The Arab world is a passion-based, hate-filled world,” proclaimed Prager. The hatred of Israel is the food of the Arab world.” Prager did not appear to mind that the President has not fulfilled his promise yet. For him, it seemed enough that the promise was made at all. “It said, ‘I care about Israel,’ unlike the previous President,” Prager enthused about Trump’s vow.

According to Prager, the President distinguishes himself from his predecessor by finding it unnecessary to court world opinion. “We are safer for the meta-reason that Donald Trump doesn’t care whether he is loved. The recipe for peace on Earth isn’t for America to be loved, but for it to be feared,” says Prager. “Those in charge of maintaining peace, should be feared.”

On the topic of defense, Hugh Hewittpointed out that when Trump entered office, sixty percent of US’s F18s were in use – “the lowest of any modern period.” The President has signed on for a $54 billion defense increase, two-thirds of what is necessary to protect the country. In 2016, defense spending had been at about
$600 billion.

“We are safer because the President has reintroduced into the equation his willingness to use vast, vast force,” Hewitt declared. This, of course, is evidenced by the 59 missile strikes deployed against Syria after the country dropped deadly gas on its people in April, killing dozens.

Hewitt believes that the President ought to be judgedon the specific promises he made during his campaign. These include the appointment of a Supreme Court justice, and the intent to repeal Obamacare, institute tax cuts, ramp up defense, and build the wall. The first and third promise have been completed already in his first one hundred days in office, while the fulfillment of the second, fourth and fifth promise is still pending. Still even partial completion of his vows is enough for Hewitt. “It’s OK to take 75 per cent and call it a win,” he allowed.

Hewitt noted that Congress authorized the building of the wall in 2006, but then delayed giving Trump the money to construct it. “I think he realizes the simple architectural planning isn’t there yet,” Hewitt said of Trump. “But once he has this planned, the money will be there.”

Joel Pollak, author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story, concurred that the President has hit all the right notes. “He has been fantastic, one of the most conservative presidents in the post-war era,” he declared, citing his signing of 13 laws that “took a hatchet to regulations from Obama where the state did not belong.” Pollak brings as an example the overreach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which allowed the government to inspect “puddles on private land.”

Other successes, Pollak said, were “the biggest tax cuts in the history of the US,” as well as the attack on Syria,” which was even praised by former Obama administrators. Dealing appropriately with Iran earned him even more foreign policy points. “Trump’s approach was by far the most sensible,” said Pollak – “to enforce the
deal vigorously and in a punishing manner, to patrol every comma, period, and footnote of the deal.”

Pollak, born to an Orthodox Jewish family in South Africa, proclaimed that the President may yet follow through on the promise of an embassy in Jerusalem. “I don’t see it as a back pedal,” he says of the fact that the President hasn’t already made the move. “David Friedman (the US Ambassador to Israel) is going to live in Jerusalem, even though the embassy is in Tel Aviv. It indicates which of the two cities the US considers Israel’s capital.”

In terms of the peace process, Pollak reiterated, the new administration will not be mirroring Obama’s, which destabilized America by taking the Palestinians’ side. In this vein, he
expressed his belief that the Human Rights Council should be dismantled, because it validates dictatorships and “legitimizes an illegitimate institution.”

Like Prager, Pollak noted a pressing danger to American Jews, citing the surge ofanti-Semitism on university campuses. “Students are being exposed to anti-Israel activities that they’re ill equipped to counter,” he said. “Liberal campuses that are supposed to be the most tolerant, aren’t. It has gotten so bad that now discrimination is happening on the basis of religion, not just for supporting Israel.”

Last year, US campuses saw a
45 percent jump in anti-Jewish sentiments, according to Tel Aviv University researchers, and the
AMCHA Initiative, which investigates anti-Semitism on college campuses. The issue will worsen, Pollack believes, as more young people and immigrants remain ignorant of the Holocaust – a tragedy all-too-often invoked and misused by those
who compare the Final Solution to the current Palestinian situation.

Jewish conference attendee Evan Sayetalso voiced his opinion on the topic. The single most important thing for US Jews now, he feels, is rebuking government-fundeduniversities “and twisting the screws against the lies and anti-Semitism [being perpetuated] in the guise of academia.” He continued,
“You might not think of American campuses [as a problem], because they don’t seem like an existential threat. You might think academia is just a place of words. Obviously, this is the next generation, who are infused
with anti-Semitism. It bodes ill for the Jews. Anti-Semitism is an evil that is placated in the Arab world, and now, other places
in the world.”

Trump’s broader vision of a better America may not necessarilycome from an ideological focus, but a pragmatic one – which suits Sayet just fine. “He’s a businessman and he realizes conservative values are what makes a society and business successful. Make the streets safe, grow business, grow the economy, fight yourenemies,” noted Sayet, author of Kindergarten of Eden. “He’s taking his tasks in order, one at a time, just [as you’d build] a building in New York City, where you don’t know when or where the next regulatory objections will come from. You just build fromfloor to floor. You just take your victories one step at a time.”

If these pundits are correct, and if the Trump administration’s successes continue over the next thirty six months, President Trump will have many noteworthy accomplishments to reference during his re-election campaign in 2020.